Poker Articles

Jeff Garza had just finished his sophomore year in high school when fellow Magic the Gathering (MTG) player David Williams took 2nd in the 2004 World Series of Poker Main Event, which got him interested in trying out the game.  Now, just a year and a half later, Jeff has secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in wins and is one of the most feared players on the net.  He has two tournament wins of $50k or more in the past 6 months, and he sports a winning record in some of the biggest and toughest cash games.

After Williams took $3.5M for his WSOP finish, people on the MTG tour started getting excited about poker and the amount of money that could be won playing it, and games started being held at all the big magic tourneys, usually in hotel rooms.  Jeff was just one of the many competitive MTG players who caught on to the poker craze and started playing regularly.

Jeff started playing poker at the $2/4 limit level in October 2004.  “I read some books and watched people and learned how to play, and the first time I played, I made a couple hundred dollars and was hooked,” he told me.

“I had just had my winningest summer playing Magic ever.  I made like $5000 and another $20,000 in scholarships, so it was kind of like I had met my goals and peaked.  Plus, there really were not many big tournaments, so I started pokering more.  I was mostly playing $2/4 limit with some friends, and when Harrington on Hold'em came out, I read it, along with the NL section of Super System. In March 2005, I deposited a couple hundred dollars on Stars, and in my second tourney, an $11 rebuy, I took 3rd for about $2800, which was how I got my roll started.”

And so, in March 2005, it began.  Jeff won nearly $3,000 in his second online tournament ever, and he was ready to win even more.

But, as is the case for most poker players, he ran into problems when it came to consistently winning.  “Early on, I made the same mistakes that everyone makes,” he admits.  “I just got luckier.”  It only took him a few weeks to lose almost all of his roll, playing games that were over his head, such as $5/10 limit and $2-4 NL.  He took a little time off from playing, focusing back on some other things and watching people play some, and then he started playing again.

Then, on one Friday night after school, he joined a $33 rebuy and won it for about $6k, and he has never been in danger of going broke since.  “I caught a break at the right time in winning that tournament,” he told me.  “My bankroll could have easily whittled away, and I might have lost interest and quit for a while, so I really got lucky in that regard.”

Since Jeff built his bankroll and started winning, he’s had a lot more money to mess around with than pretty much anyone else his age.  Despite that, he hasn’t bought a ton of new stuff.  He’s gotten some nice clothes and some “bling,” as he puts it, and he plans to get a car fairly soon, but most importantly, the money he’s made in poker, along with his scholarship money, will ensure that he is able pay his way through college.

Speaking of college, while it’s a high priority for Jeff, he is still trying to decide whether or not to defer for a year.  He’s already applied to and gotten into some colleges, but he’s considering taking a little time off from school to do some travelling.  If he did, he’d likely be going to some of the tournaments in other parts of the world that allow 18 year olds to play.  He still hasn’t played a live tournament, as he was not 18 in time for Aruba last year and wasn’t able to fit PCA into his schedule.  He’s considering kicking off his live career at either Turning Stone or the EPT event in Monte Carlo this year.

Jeff doesn’t expect to become a full time poker professional at any point, but still considers it a possibility.  He’s generally played poker for the thrill of the competition, rather than the money, and that would have to change in order to be a professional.  Either way, he told me, he is definitely going to college at some point.

Jeff plans to get in a lot of high stakes NL hands this year, eventually becoming a regular $50-100 player.  In addition, he’d like to play more heads up SNGs.  He had success at the $5k HU’s for a short time, but, as he put it, “they were so stressful that I just never felt like playing.”   He also feels he’s gotten a lot better at closing out MTT’s, and he hopes to have a few more $50k+ wins by the end of 2006.

One of the $50k wins he’s already had was by far the biggest for him, psychologically.  That was event #6 in the 2005 WCOOP on PokerStars, the LHE freezeout, which he chopped for an even $50k payout.  “Even if I win the Sunday main event on Stars for $150k, that would still be the biggest win,” he says.  “It just meant a lot to win the bracelet and all of that money, and to actually take down the tourney.  That tournament tested me in every way.”  Ironically, he was grounded the day he won it, which was a Friday.  He played for over 12 hours, taking only occasional breaks, with his laptop in a hot room upstairs in his house.  He had the window open so he could pick up his neighbor’s wireless connection!

Jeff has learned a lot from some of the other top players, including sheets, Ozzy 87, JohnnyBax, Michael1123, and iMsoLucky0.  He also has learned quite a bit from H@££INGGOL, ever since he, as he put it, “broke out of super tight aggro mode,” which is how he felt he played when he first started in the $10-20 NL games.

Jeff’s favorite site to play on is PokerStars, due to their excellent selection of rebuys and the quality of their support.  His only qualm with stars is that they don’t have the tourney structure that UB has.  In his opinion, the size of prizepools is what keeps UB from being an excellent site.

Jeff gave me a quick blurb on why his style of play is effective, which I have included here now:

“I think it's very important for an MTT player to be able to mix up his or her play. If you go into a big tourney with the plan of just running it over for 7 hours straight, you are going to get killed.

“A lot of people regard me as kind of a maniac, and I definitely like having that reputation; but they are usually mistaken.  In reality, I am playing much tighter than most of the players at a given table 80% of the time.  People see me playing very loosely and aggressively, re-raising bad hands randomly, and they just kind of assume I always play like that, but that's just late in the tournament when I have a lot of chips, or at certain levels where I think it is important to accumulate.  Most of the time, I think it is right to just be patient.  A lot of players online, even in big buy in tournaments, are really bad.  You just aren't going to be able to outplay them with bad hands often enough for it to be profitable.

“My plan/strategy is to be selectively aggresive. It is sometimes correct to open the pot 2/3 of the time it's passed to you mid and late position at 100-200 and 25 ante when you have 10K chips. Conversely, one level later in the tournament, it might be correct to fold AQs for a single raise. I also think it's important to be very aggressive post flop once you've shown strength. I am never afraid to bet, get raised, and three bet all in on the draw, or with only middle pair. I think it is critical to be able to make these moves.”